For Olga and her Ukrainian colleagues who still work at the plant, the specter of nuclear disaster isn’t just nightmares – it’s a daily reality. It’s “like sleeping and having a dream,” she told CNN in a recent phone interview, describing the surreal, lingering shock she experienced working at the plant, which, though held by Russian forces, is still operated mostly by Ukrainian technicians. In the months since the nuclear facility was seized, Ukrainian employees have slowly begun to return – performing work in partially broken rooms and only coming into contact with Russian soldiers when they pass through two checkpoints to enter the compound. “After the occupation, only operational staff worked at the station. There were many broken and burnt rooms and windows. Then they gradually started asking people to come to work for specific tasks,” Olga, whose name has been changed to protecting her identity, she said. “Now the part of the staff that did not leave is working. About 35 to 40% of the employees left.” Reduced staff and increased fighting make working conditions increasingly poor. Ukraine and Russia traded blame again after more shelling around the plant on Thursday night, hours after the United Nations called on both sides to halt military activities near the power station, warning of the worst if they do not. they do. “Unfortunately, instead of de-escalation, in recent days there have been reports of further deeply disturbing incidents that could, if they continue, lead to catastrophe,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “I call for the withdrawal of military personnel and equipment from the plant and the avoidance of further deployment of forces or equipment at the site.” Addressing a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Thursday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said the recent attacks had destroyed parts of the plant, with an “unacceptable” risk of a potential radioactive leak and called urgently to allow a team of experts to access the site, where the situation has “deteriorated very rapidly”. “This is a serious hour, grave hour, and the IAEA must be allowed to carry out its mission in Zaporizhia as soon as possible,” Grossi said. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of targeting a storage site for “radiative sources” and bombing a fire station near the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant is operating “at the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards.” Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi said on Friday that there was “insufficient control” at the plant and that Ukrainian experts who remained there did not have access to certain areas where they should have been. CNN could not confirm the details provided by Energoatom or Monastyrskyi, but Grossi said some parts of the plant were not working. Olga also confirmed that parts of the complex are inaccessible to Ukrainian personnel. Russia continued to accuse Ukraine of being behind the attacks. A local occupation administration official, Vladimir Rogov, told Russia’s state-run Rossiya 24 news agency on Friday that there was “continuous damage” to the plant’s power transmission line and suggested the complex may be “naphthalized” – without any explanation as for how this can happen. Ukrainian authorities say Russian missiles fired from the nuclear power plant hit the city of Nikopol, on the right bank of the Dnipro River, and surrounding areas in the past week. At least 13 people were killed in the shelling on Tuesday night and many others were injured on Wednesday and Thursday night, including a 13-year-old girl, according to local officials. In recent months, Olga said she has seen Russian military equipment arriving at the nuclear complex, although much of it has now been hidden from view. “Initially there was equipment on the territory of the station, now there is even more,” he said, adding that workers are not allowed in the premises where it is kept. But when he returns home from work, Russia’s firepower is clear, he said. “Atrocities happen at night, the king bombards the city. “The incoming blow on the right bank (of the river) rattles so much that the houses shake and the windows shake. It’s chilling in the silence of the night when people are sleeping,” he added. All over Dnipro, in Nikopoli, the attacks are now merciless. From the window of her home near the city’s harbor, Oksana Miraevska can look across the water and see the volley of incoming shells. “If something happens to the power plant, some accident… I can’t think of it. Do you think anything could help us? We are 7 kilometers from the nuclear plant across the river! Nothing will save us, I” sure Miraevska, a 45-year-old small business owner, told CNN in a phone call. “That’s why I don’t even entertain the thought.” When the shelling broke out last month, Miraevska said many residents fled in panic, but she stayed behind trying to help locally, mostly by taking in abandoned pets. At night, she and her teenage son take the animals down to their bomb shelter, where they all sleep. “When they started shelling us, that’s when life changed in general. I live in the basement, we go there for the night. We’ve been sleeping there for a month,” Miraevska said. “I don’t think the enemy should be underestimated,” he added. It’s the same message echoed by international experts, warning of the devastating impact a faulty shell could cause. Last weekend, the fires destroyed a dry storage facility – where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant – as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making it impossible to detect any potential leak, according to Energoatom. The attacks also damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant’s reactors to shut down. This uptick in bombing prompted the IAEA to step up its efforts to send a mission of experts to visit the plant to assess and protect the complex. While an initial assessment by experts found “no immediate threat to nuclear safety” at the plant, Grossi said Thursday that “that could change at any time.” He added that while the agency was in frequent contact with Ukrainian and Russian authorities about the plant, the information provided was “contradictory.” Demands for a cessation of hostilities have increased in the past week. The G7 group of major industrial nations issued a statement from their meeting in Germany on Wednesday calling on Russia to withdraw its forces and hand over control of the plant to Ukraine. The statement laid the blame at the feet of the Russian armed forces, which the G7 countries said “significantly increases the risk of a nuclear accident or incident and endangers the population of Ukraine, neighboring countries and the international community”. A State Department spokesman said Thursday that the United States supported calls for a “demilitarized zone” around the nuclear plant and asked Russia to “cease all military operations at or near Ukrainian nuclear facilities.” CNN’s Olga Voitovych, Yulia Kesaieva and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
